N.Z. INDUSTRIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 283, 30 November 1938, Page 13

N.Z. INDUSTRIES.

FIVE OBSTACLES. PRODUCTION DIFFICULTIES. MANUFACTURER'S WARNING, (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, Tuesday. "There are five factors that are outstanding obstacles to industry fuctioning at ,its full productive capacity— high wages, fewer hours per week, lessened production per man-hour, interference with the labour market per medium of the Government's Public Works policy, and crippling company taxation," said Mr. J. T. Spears, of Wellington, in his presidential address at the annual conference of the New Zealand Manufacturers' Federation today. "New Zealand is now entering on the fourth year of a system of government that has made more radical alterations in the incidence of taxation, conditions of work, restrictions in private enterprise, limitations in returns from the investment of private capital,, and burdens of industrial companies than ever before in its history. Not only must industry shoulder the burden of mounting costs of production, but it has also to niake provision for tlie disproportionately high taxation of profits. "These obstacles have to •be surmounted. too, in the fare of very keen competition from overseas countries, where private industry is allowed freer scope, and where prohibitive and restrictive legislation has been sparingly indulged in, if indulged in at all," continued Mr. Spears. "Will Not Mix." "Private enterprise in New Zealand has to do its work in the teeth of sectional endeavours to make the country a Socialistic State. It cannot be controverted that private enterprise and socialism are like oil and water—they will not mix. "While the initiative of law-making remains with that section of the community that is imbued with the ideal of redistributing the national income by depriving private enterprise of an undue proportion of its legitimate rewards of industry, the incentive to produce must necessarily suffer, and unhappily at a time when only substantially increased production can save the State from economic collapse. "The Prime Minister has said that private industry has nothing to fear from him if it fulfils its function and that private investments Will be adequately protected on the same terms. This is reassuring, but it is pertinent to observe that the fulfilment of the j conditions depends on the opportunity. The present taxation burden renders fulfilment difficult. With any fall in prices of our primary products overseas, fulfilment may well become impossible. This- would be a calamity."